Today 1st of December we are proud to present you what is one of the biggest game updates since the beginning of Early Access. As you may notice, this build has some obvious influences from Master of Orion II, but it is also the result of processing a lot of feedback that you have been provided since it all started. So once again, thank you for your input and support.

YouTube™ Video: Master of Orion: Revenge of Antares DLC – Teaser

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New enemies, alliances, and betrayals are ready to sweep the galaxy in the first story expansion DLC for Master of Orion: Revenge of Antares.

The new content can be divided into two parts:

“Revenge of Antares Race Pack” DLC

We are bringing back the three iconic races that were first introduced with Master of Orion II: the elegant yet xenophobic Elerian, the peaceful aquatic Trilarian and the skilled traders Gnolam join the fight for Orion!

Update v54.6 highlights

The Antarans are back!

Leaders and Governors

Minor Civilizations

Ship profiles for Tactical Battles

A complete revamp of Espionage

Support for Mods in Multiplayer

IMPORTANT NOTE: due to the heavy gameplay modifications, your old savegames won’t be loadable once you update the Master of Orion client. In order to allow you to finish your ongoing games we have enabled a Steam Branch which contains the build 51.3, you can access it by going to the game properties/betas and selecting the option “version51 — Pollution and Gravity Update” Also, please be advised that old mods may cause issues with the new version of Master of Orion, so you may need to update them (if a new version is available) or deactivate them. Read on for the full patch notes, and as always we are eager to get your feedback!

Detailed Changes v54.6

AI

Improved evaluation of planet rating for better deal evaluation

Improved invasion analysis and execution

Improved Opportunity Rating and Opportunity Threshold analysis

The AI is now better at handling its Command Points at an Empire level

We are very happy to release the Revenge of Antares expansion today.
This is the biggest update that the game has received since early access.
Alongside this free update we are also releasing a Race pack DLC that includes the ocean dwelling Trillarians, the lucky traders known as the Gnolams and the all-seeing (telepathic!) Elerians.

Free Expansion + Paid DLC.

To clarify beyond any kind of doubt, the paid DLC only unlocks the new playable races. The rest of the update is completely free for everyone.

About the free update

I am happy to tell you that the update there is a great deal of improvements that the community has been asking for. Some of this additions had been planned since the game’s inception while others became straight from community feedback.
The new features:

Antarans:
The dreaded enemy vanished from the galaxy by the Orionites are back. They are always a threat to the most prominent races in the galaxy and you can win the game by opening a portal to their pocket dimension

Espionage:
Espionage has been totally revamped, allowing the player to recruit them and train them as they see fit. Assignment has also been streamlined as there are empire wide missions and colony missions. This system scales better to for different galaxy sizes and styles of play. It also has less micro management as counter espionage is also empire wide (and the default mission)

Leaders:
A highly requested feature, Leaders are a big improvement in the game. Not only they come with perks, a nice portrait and background history as in MoO 2 but the player is able to customize the progression of their leaders as they level up!

AI:
We fixed a lot of bugs and corrected several issues in the AI. Lately, on certain conditions the AI would to expand a lot without having a big enough armada to defend such a large territory. Now the AI takes into consideration the size of the armada in order to expand. This creates a virtuous cycle, the bigger the armada the more it will try to expand and the bigger the armada it will build, of course this is all modulated by diplomatic status/threat level. Considering that the AI is now doing a lot more because of the new features it may still require more work. Please give us your feedback.

Balance:
The economy balance is now tighter and more interesting thanks to the new features that require ongoing expenditures (new Espionage / Leader system). Also, we also made research produce 3 RP per population while increasing the costs of the tech nodes in a similar way. This makes research more balanced to the other currencies. Now rushing techs early is harder to do thus more valuable. Overall the experience should feel more balanced and filled with interesting choices.

Minor Civs:
We finally got the chance to re-work the Minors into the game. The new system is a simpler, cleaner yet much more meaningful feature. Systems with Minor Races are now very valuable as they provide powerful bonuses.

Tactical Combat and ship design:
We continued to improve tactical combat by giving more control to the player. Players can now ram your ships towards the enemy kamikaze style. Also, it is possible to select a role in ship design, so the ships will have a default behavior that is appropriate for its design.

Pollution Tweaks
We understand that there are certain concerns regarding pollution. We believe that it’s a feature that adds depth to the game and if we tone it down a lot we will just eliminate it altogether. We increased slightly the absortion rate of all planets and doubled the rate of barren planets so they can have a progression of their own outside of just terraforming.
We also added a new structure: The Recyclotron, this structure provides a lot of absorption but it requires a rich or higher level of mineral richness.
We believe that this is a much more balanced incarnation of this feature. Please try to adjust your strategies accordingly you may find a more interesting gameplay experience.

As you can see this update is massive, it also includes quite a bit of quality of life improvements, a lot of bug fixes and other additions (even some new GNN bits).

The link to the complete changelog in case you want all the details follow this LINK

(1) I'm very happy much feedback was adressed. I have to look into the upkeep system of espionage, but as far as I can see, it goes into the right direction.

(2) I have to say that the content of the unpaid update is great, however I will probably not buy the additional races because the empress of the Elerians is so weird looking. I like their "assistant" much more.

(3) After seeing the Antarans in action I'm now more happy with them than before (the static image didn't look very nicely).

(4) I saw a let's play with an Antaran ship seeking cover behind an asteroid, is this intended behavior or coincidence?

(5) I have to look a little more whether the leaders have the same amount of "personality" as the original ones, but I'm already glad they're back.

Can I please ask why the Mrrshan are not yet as their lore describes? Why is it so hard to turn them into gunners instead of ground combat specialists?

Most other races I can live by, but this is REALLY an itch I cannot scratch.

You're never going to get a straight answer about that. I recall GeneralDirection had some nebulous answer about "Design Vision" being the reason.behind the various racial attributes and also why they are not balanced. The developers don't care about it.

Fortunately you can mod the attributes for the races to solve the discrepancies, in most cases.

The new espionage is perfect, no more annoying micro. Having the Antarans show up is great. Minor civs are back! Yes! And leaders are handled very well. The UI is much better as well, giving the player more important info to make decisions. And the AI seems much better now as well. The AI expands much better. With this new patch and the DLC, MOO feels like a complete game now. Good job!

Looks like they tone down the invading Antaran fleets. I'm at turn 411 and was all ready for a monster fleet -- the one that invaded back on turn 376 had 500 ships, including 100 battleships. But instead its 99 ships with a strength 2107/14403, with only a 2 turn arrival time. So I'm a little disappointed, but mostly relieved the Antarans won't be a problem now in this game where I'm going for a 500-turn Score Victory.

Edit:

Spoke too soon -- the Turn 455 Antaran invasion fleet was over 1022 ships, including about 162 battleships and 155 cruisers. The quick battle resolver estimated it as an 'even' fight, and yet quick resolve had them wipe my 39 titan fleet and still have 800 ships left over. No way could my poor laptop handle actually running the tactical fight. The bio bombing on my planet wiped it out win the first 200 bombs, and I had to wait a couple minutes while it rolled off the extra thousand bombs doing nothing but pound sand.

I've basically won the game I'm playing. I've researched everything, taken Orion and have dominated the galaxy. But I can't figure out how to attack the Antaran home world and win the game with that victory condition. I feel like I missed something somewhere... anyone know how?

So guys, I haven't played MoO in a while. I come back and my save game - which I've put many hours into and am very attached to - is no longer accessible! I play using the GoG version, because GoG is great, but there is no solution for me? I just have to start over and forget about the last steps I was making toward winning the game, and the awesome things I had done?

This was awesome. Played my first game today. On very easy. Apparently, very easy was too hard. At turn 77, I have two planets. Antarens show up. Destroy starbase, two frigates and a destroyer and start bombing me back to stone age. I've gone back a whole bunch of turns and tried to build defenses. Nope. Still dead. I particularly liked how my fleet starts a f***** mile away from my starbase so that by the time my fleet is in range of their fleet, the starbase is already dead. Hats of to my ships captains, and the designers of this f***** game.

My first game is over. Done. On Very Easy. Wow. That was immensely fun. I'm now debating whether I'm going to start another game. WTF.

Bonus points: they did leave after a turn, while I dealt with -100BC for missing Command Points from the destroyed Star Base.

Yes, I restarted a new game without the fucking Antrarans (thanks for that @Exoclyps). Way more fun. Like, actually fun.